Miami police get OK to carry assault weapons

McClatchy Newspapers

Published Sunday, September 16, 2007

MIAMI -- Citing a dramatic increase in the availability of high-powered, semiautomatic assault rifles -- like the one used Thursday to kill a Miami-Dade County police officer -- Miami Police Chief John Timoney has for the first time authorized his officers to start carrying similarly lethal weapons.

A burgeoning "arms race" between police and heavily armed drug gangs forced him to sign the new policy earlier this week, Timoney said, even before Thursday's lopsided confrontation between four pistol-toting county police officers and a burglary suspect armed with what police are calling a "military grade" assault weapon.

Miami-Dade Police Sgt. Jose Somohano died in the shootout; three other officers were injured. The assailant, Shawn Labeet, escaped apparently unscathed, until he was cornered and shot dead by heavily armed police in Pembroke Pines late Thursday night.

The doctor who operated on seriously injured Miami-Dade police Officer Jody Wright -- she was about 200 feet from Labeet when he fired at her -- described the grapefruit-size bullet wound on her right leg as the type "you would see in a war."

"This is a very, very different injury from the common handgun 'Saturday night special' wound we see in urban trauma centers," Ryder Trauma Center orthopedic surgeon Dr. Gregory Zych said.

Timoney, a longtime advocate of tighter gun control, blames the 2004 expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons for the escalation of firepower on Miami's streets.

"This is really a failure of leadership at the national level, we are absolutely going in the wrong direction here," Timoney said. "The whole thing is a friggin' disgrace."

One in five homicides in Miami this year have been committed with assault weapons, said Miami Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez. The number was 18 percent last year and up from just 4 percent in 2004.

The change to the city of Miami's police policy is part of a growing trend in South Florida and across the country of police departments adding firepower to compete with increasingly heavily armed criminals.

Miami-Dade police union chief John Rivera said lifting the assault weapons ban is one of "many little components" causing the apparent increase of military-style weapons on South Florida streets, and said adding firepower for police will help even the odds.

"I know it starts to a look like a military state when you start doing that," he said. "But we need bullets that are going to knock you down, we need a fighting chance."

Assault weapons, like the Russian AK-47 and countless knockoffs, are cheap and easy to obtain. Online retailers offer them for as little as $300.

Labeet, who attacked the Miami-Dade officers on Thursday, bought six of them in the space of four months using a bogus ID, said Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Linda O'Brien.

At the time, Labeet had a 2002 arrest warrant pending in Broward, where authorities had charged him aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated assault with a firearm.

The mismatch between an assault rifle and the pistols police commonly use comes down to range and firepower. An assault rifle can kill from 100 yards away, said former Miami-Dade police Maj. Ricardo Gomez. The effective range of police pistols is less than 25 yards.

Bullets fired from an assault weapon can punch through car doors, walls, even some bulletproof vests -- all things police commonly rely on for cover.

And then there's the issue of reloading: most police pistols have 10 bullet magazines, AK-47 magazines commonly hold 30 rounds.

Add it all up and it's easy to see why police want to level the playing field, said Gomez, who will be the first chief of Doral's newly formed, independent police department.

"We're trying to mirror Coral Springs, a nice, peaceful community where they issue carbines to all of their officers," Gomez said. "Down here, where there's a greater proclivity for violence, we're falling behind the eight ball."

Some young people in the city have come to see the weapons as a status symbol. "Not that long ago we had a woman call to report her son's gold plated AK-47 stolen," Fernandez said with a bemused chuckle. "Who, in God's name, gets their kid a gold-plated AK-47?"

Fernandez said that unless the department can find additional funding, patrol officers who want assault weapons will have to pay for them out of their own pockets. They will also have to go through specialized training before getting certified to carry the weapons on duty.

The Broward Sheriff's Office approved use of high-powered weapons "about a year ago," said spokesman Elliot Cohen. About 25 percent of its deputies have gone through training and received certification to carry the guns in locked boxes inside their patrol cars, or in their trunks, Cohen said.

Every BSO district has AR-15s -- the civilian version of the military M-16 -- that officers can sign-out, Cohen said.

Only specialized units within the Miami-Dade Police Department, like the SWAT team and narcotics officers making undercover drug buys, are issued assault weapons, department officials said. Regular patrol officers who want the weapons must receive clearance on a "case by case basis," Miami-Dade police spokesman Roy Rutland said on Friday.

If they get clearance, and complete specialized training, they have to buy the guns themselves.

But union president Rivera said Friday that he had never heard of the policy allowing regular patrol officers to arm themselves with assault rifles. Other current and former Miami-Dade police officers echoed that point.

"The only thing this department will give you is a .38 six shot," said Rivera, who noted that officers have to pay for their own semi-automatic handguns.